COMING SOON: Randolph Bourne and His Contemporaries on Americanism, Americanization, and National Identity

Editor"s Note:

What we emphatically do not want is that these distinctive qualities should be washed out into a tasteless, colorless fluid of uniformity. Already we have far too much of this insipidity, -- masses of people who are cultural half-breeds, neither assimilated Anglo-Saxons nor nationals of another culture. Each national colony in this country seems to retain in its foreign press, its vernacular literature, its schools, its intellectual and patriotic leaders, a central cultural nucleus. From this nucleus the colony extends out by imperceptible gradations to a fringe where national characteristics are all but lost. Our cities are filled with these half-breeds who retain their foreign names but have lost the foreign savor. This does not mean that they have actually been changed into New Englanders or MiddleWesterners. It does not mean that they have been really Americanized. It means that, letting slip from them whatever native culture they had, they have substituted for it only the most rudimentary American -- the American culture of the cheap newspaper, the 'movies,' the popular song, the ubiquitous automobile. The unthinking who survey this class call them assimilated, Americanized. The great American public school has done its work. With these people our institutions are safe. We may thrill with dread at the aggressive hyphenate, but this tame flabbiness is accepted as Americanization. The same moulders of opinion whose ideal is to melt the different races into Anglo-Saxon gold hail this poor product as the satisfying result of their alchemy. -- Randolph Bourne, "Trans-national America," The Atlantic Monthly, July 1916

The "Melting Pot" exercises that marked the graduation ceremony at the Ford Motor Company English School were dramatic in the extreme: A deckhand came down the gang plank of the ocean liner, represented in canvas facsimile. "What cargo?" was the hail he received. "About 230 hunkies," he called back. "Send 'em along and we'll see what the melting pot will do for them," said the other and from the ship came a line of immigrants, in the poor garments of their native lands. Into the gaping pot they went. Then six instructors of the Ford school, with long ladles, started stirring. "Stir! Stir!" urged the superintendent of the school. The six bent to greater efforts. From the pot fluttered a flag, held high, then the first of the finished product of the pot appeared, waving his hat. The crowd cheered as he mounted the edge and came down the steps on the side. Many others followed him, gathering in two groups on each side of the cauldron. In contrast to the shabby rags they wore when they were unloaded from the ship, all wore neat suits. They were American in looks. And ask anyone of them what nationality he is, and the reply will come quickly, "American!" "Polish-American?" you might ask. "No, American," would be the answer. For they are taught in the Ford school that the hyphen is a minus sign. — From: Peter C. Marzio, ed., A Nation of Nations: The People Who Came to America as Seen Through Objects, Prints, and Photographs at the Smithsonian Institution (New York, 1976), 373.

Bourne's essay continues to fascinate historians and to perplex our students. Bourne entered into the centuries-old and often acrimonious debate over American national identity with a sweeping, even astounding, claim. Virtually every other voice was wrong, albeit some more disastrously so than others. There was no "Melting Pot." Americanization, even when well-intentioned, aimed at narrow and superficial sameness. In the place of these formulas, Bourne proposed his own, a new cosmopolitanism that was arising out of the free movement of peoples and, so he hoped and believed, a growing tolerance for diverse cultures, values, and customs.

As historians continue to debate what Bourne meant by "trans-national" and how to assess his significance in the ongoing national debate over Americanism and Americanization, we continue to ask undergraduates to join us in both endeavors. Christopher McKnight Nichols, author of "Rethinking Randolph Bourne's Trans-National America: How World War I Created an Isolationist Antiwar Pluralism" in the April 2009 issue of JGAPE, here offers some suggestions both in reading and in teaching Bourne's classic text.

This is not an entirely original venture. In 1998 David T. Bailey, then associate professor of history at Michigan State University, and David G. Halsted, then Senior Research Associate with H-NET, collaborated on "Pluralism and Unity," a site still online. It contains a substantial number of relevant texts organized around several questions: What is an American? Who gets to say what an American is? What is un-American? When did Americans become Americans? Where is the center of American identity? H-NET sponsored the project and still provides server space. Some links no longer work.

"Pluralism and Unity" was too far ahead of its time. Few historians looked to cyberspace for intellectual sustenance in 1998. And those visiting the site today will find no way of engaging their colleagues. We can remedy this deficiency with this forum. And we can call belated attention to a pioneering project.

Americanization

A new vision of pluralism

The roiling disputes over American foreign policy and the nation's entry into WWI